Seven Sorcerers

March 28, 2011
With her debut novel, published in England in 2009, King demonstrates the whimsy, melancholy, and matter-of-fact coping with horror that characterizes classic British children's literature. Nineveh "Nin" Redstone is 11 years old and resolutely ordinary. Her four-year-old brother is nothing but a nuisance until the awful Wednesday when she wakes up and he's gone. Worse, no one but Nin remembers he exists. It's left to her to reclaim him from Skerridge (a bogeyman) and the Terrible House of Strood. A young vagabond, Jonas, fortuitously offers his assistance in navigating the Drift, a parallel world where the Fabulous ("Faeries and worse. Giants, dragons, elves, the lot") live. But the magic that sustains the Fabulous is dying, and most of what is left is as terrible as the bogeymanâ"the essence of dread and desire made real." There are also unpredictable traces of the seven vanished sorcerers, whose lingering magic changes the course of Nin's adventure. The telling is energetic and absorbing; only the abrupt ending detracts slightly. King has already published a sequel in the U.K., and readers stateside ought to be eager for it. Ages 8â12.

September 1, 2011

Gr 5-8-Ninevah Redstone, 11, awakens one morning to the absence of her younger brother's typical noise. Toby has disappeared, and all traces of him have been erased from the world except for Nin's memory and her brother's favorite stuffed toy. He has, in fact, been taken to the Drift, a parallel world inhabited by the "Fabulous" (giants, fairies, tombfolk, and the like), where a plague has been killing off most things magical. Nin's quest for him drives the plot as she befriends an older boy who seems to straddle both realms, tries to avoid being nabbed by her brother's captor (a terrifying bogeyman named Skerridge), and delves into the secrets of the now-disappeared Seven Sorcerers whose powers still linger behind. Unfortunately, the pacing is poor, everything happens too woodenly, and the narrative focuses on telling rather than showing, and telling without finesse. Nin herself is uncommonly astute and brave in one paragraph and blubbering in the next. One-dimensional characters pop up out of nowhere. American youngsters may also struggle with the colloquial British English and the dialects used by some of the creatures. By the time the book's rather intriguing premise becomes apparent, most readers will have abandoned the effort.-Corinne Henning-Sachs, Walker Memorial Library, Westbrook, ME

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